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Premier League’s failure to prevent Chelsea’s latest accounting tricks shows it can’t regulate its clubs

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6269885/2025/04/11/premier-league-Chelsea-regulator/

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At various points over the past few years, people have stopped and asked how on earth Chelsea could afford to spend such enormous sums in the transfer market without falling foul to the Premier League’s financial regulations.

The responses at the time, gleaned from people inside Stamford Bridge as well as various financial experts, usually pointed to the way the club had structured many of these deals: not just spreading transfer payments over several years, but protecting players’ value on the balance sheet by signing them to eight-, nine- or even 10-year contracts.

Chelsea, it was always stated, were confident they would comply with the league’s profit and sustainability regulations (PSR), even if some of us struggled to see how a staggering — and, as it transpired, staggeringly ineffective — £745.2million ($967m) transfer outlay over the course of the 2022-23 season could be accounted for.

In the event, PSR compliance was met in the summer of 2023 thanks to a series of sales just before the PSR deadline at the end of June: Edouard Mendy and Kalidou Koulibaly to Al Ahli for a combined £33m, Mateo Kovacic to Manchester City for £25m, Ruben Loftus-Cheek to Milan for £15m, Kai Havertz to Arsenal for £65m and… a couple of hotels adjacent to Stamford Bridge, plus car parking, to BlueCo 22 Properties Ltd, a subsidiary of the club’s holding company, for £76.5m.

The hotel sale caused anger among some of Chelsea’s rivals amid questions about both the valuation and its legitimacy within the context of PSR. The Premier League analysed the hotel sales for fair market value, making a slight adjustment to Chelsea’s profit in terms of the PSR calculation. But no rules had been broken.

Significantly, though, the league agreed to hold a vote to decide whether to remove clubs’ ability to include asset sales — stadiums, training grounds, hotels, office buildings etc — in future PSR calculations. The loophole, it seemed, was about to be closed.

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Chelsea’s highly successful women’s team has been sold within the existing ownership (Nathan Stirk/Getty Images)

But when it came to a vote at the Premier League’s annual meeting in Harrogate last June, only 11 of the 20 clubs backed the motion, well short of the two-thirds majority required for rule changes.

There followed another period of frantic trading just before last summer’s PSR deadline (Ian Maatsen to Aston Villa for £37.5m, Omari Hutchinson to Ipswich Town for £20m), which went a long way towards a huge £152m transfer profit for the season.

But Chelsea still needed another lever to pull. Sure enough, their latest accounts, released last week, detailed the “repositioning” sale of their women’s team to BlueCo 22 Midco Limited, another subsidiary of BlueCo 22 Limited, for £200m. Another big loss became a pre-tax profit of £128.4m and, at a stroke, another PSR headache seemed to be cured.

Once again, there is consternation among some of their rivals, asking how on earth Chelsea’s WSL team, which declared revenues of just over £11m last season, could be valued at £200m. The Premier League are still to assess that deal for fair market value, but internally there is a feeling that — unlike UEFA, European football’s governing body, who do not allow such asset sales to sister companies to count towards their financial fair play (FFP) calculations — their authority on the matter was effectively eliminated by that lost vote in Harrogate last June.

Among the clubs who voted against closing the loophole, or abstained, some felt the wording of the proposed change was too vague, failing to distinguish between the type of non-football revenues they felt they should be allowed to exploit (such as building hotels or entertainment venues) and apparent tricks of accountancy.

Others felt that even if they disagreed with the principle, they would be wrong to vote for something that might constrain them if they needed to address a cash shortfall at a later date.

That sums up the whole mess. You have financial regulations designed to keep spending under control, but from the start, they have been less stringent than their UEFA equivalent. You have clubs racking up huge losses but nonetheless able to comply with spending regulations after finding and exploiting loopholes in the rulebook. You have a league that does not have the authority to regulate itself because the rulebook is determined by the clubs. You have clubs that instinctively object to a certain loophole but feel unable to vote against it because self-interest tells them they might just need it in future.

This week, The Athletic revealed that Bournemouth would have been in breach of PSR in at least one of the past two seasons had the Premier League not approved a £71.4m loan write-off when Bill Foley’s Black Knight Football Club bought the club from Maxim Demin in December 2022.

In normal circumstances, a shareholder loan would not be allowed to be written off from a PSR perspective. The Premier League allowed it in the Bournemouth case because it was linked to the takeover rather than “ordinary business”.

But without that write-off, the club would have recorded pre-tax losses of £148.6m over a three-year cycle, against a permitted PSR limit of £83m  — and, if you support Everton or Nottingham Forest, both of whom were hit with points deduction last season, it might reopen old wounds and frustrations regarding the fairness or otherwise of the PSR regime.

Shareholder loans have become a big issue in the PSR debate, with Everton, Arsenal and Brighton & Hove Albion all benefiting from interest-free loans in excess of £250m. Manchester City’s latest challenge to the PSR rules suggested that, if certain commercial deals with “related parties” can be scrutinised or even vetoed by the Premier League if they are felt to be at more favourable rates than market value, then the benefits derived from interest-free loans from a shareholder should fall into the same category.

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Manchester City’s stance on that issue seems entirely reasonable. But there will be no crackdown on interest-free loans unless a) there is a vote on the matter and b) at least 14 of the 20 Premier League clubs side with them. Once again, self-interest would be likely to hold sway.

The Premier League is going from one regulatory crisis to another. Any hopes of possible “closure” after the eventual resolution of their case against Manchester City — relating to more than 100 alleged breaches of the competition’s financial rules between 2009 and 2016, which the club deny — have been replaced by concerns of further legal actions and further attacks on the league’s attempts to regulate itself and its member clubs.

It is a grim situation and it divides opinion hugely between those who feel the league has got involved in things it shouldn’t have done and those who feel the league should have been far more stringent far earlier to stop things spiralling so far beyond its control.

Equally, the very notion of financial regulation divides opinion between those who consider the rules too restrictive (the ones who feel Everton and Forest were punished for “showing ambition” last season) and those who consider the rules too permissive (those of us who feel that the Merseyside club would have been far better served had the Premier League stepped in much earlier and much more assertively to avert the threat of financial meltdown under Farhad Moshiri’s ownership).

Chelsea’s is a different situation, but it comes back to the same concern about the dangers — both to the competition and to the club itself — of unsustainable spending. Concerns about the impact on the competition have been quelled by the fact that the two biggest single-season transfer outlays in football history have so far brought mediocre results on the pitch, but that is hardly the point when they are playing against clubs who stay well within the very loose spending limits that the regulations allow.

Among some top-flight clubs, there is an admiration for the way Chelsea have operated under the ownership of a consortium led by Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital: the amortisation trick with those staggeringly long contracts; the vast accumulation of younger players with resale value in mind; the willingness to exploit loopholes by selling the hotels and the women’s team to ensure that they remain PSR-compliant even while running up another huge operating loss.

But the difficulty in praising Chelsea’s owners for their ingenuity is that, just as signing Mykhailo Mudryk and numerous others on eight-year contracts looks rather less than inspired two years in, selling assets to a sister company is the type of move that tends to set alarm bells ringing in English football.

Derby County turned a loss into a profit when they sold their stadium to a company owned by their then-owner, Mel Morris, two days before their accounting deadline in June 2018; Sheffield Wednesday did likewise by selling their Hillsborough stadium to their owner, Dejphon Chansiri, a year later.

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Stamford Bridge is protected from sale by the CPO (Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

In these cases and others, such as at Reading and the previous ownership regime at Birmingham City, these are looked back upon as regrettable moves, born of desperation, rather than a template for sensible club ownership. The EFL, feeling their rulebook was being abused and that heritage and vital assets were being traded with little consideration for long-term consequences, closed that loophole.

Aston Villa sold Villa Park to NSWE Stadium Limited, a company controlled by their co-owners, Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens — again at a time of financial difficulty in the final weeks before an accounting deadline at the end of the 2018-19 season. Without that sale, Villa would have been in breach of the EFL’s financial regulations in the season that brought promotion.

There are no regrets in Villa’s case given the heights they have reached since, but perhaps there has also been a recognition, amid the club’s continuing PSR challenges of the past few seasons, that you can only sell the family silver once.

But should it ever be an option to sell a stadium, a training ground or even one of the club’s teams — in Chelsea’s case, the women’s team — to address a headache brought about by wild spending?

It is the type of action that would be discouraged, if not totally outlawed, under the UK government’s plans for an independent regulator for English football. One proposal in the Football Government Bill is that the regulator would listen to supporters’ views before deciding whether to approve any plan to sell a club’s key assets, such as a stadium or, presumably, a team.

The very notion of an independent regulator is anathema to those at Premier League HQ as well as to most of the clubs. One of the phrases we keep hearing is about the danger of “unintended consequences”.

But the story of English football in the 21st century has been full of unintended consequences, unsuitable owners and unforeseen problems. A laissez-faire approach led to a climate in which nothing was off-limits. The more the Premier League has tried to address its regulatory challenges over the past few years, the harder its life has become.

The repercussions of the Manchester City case, whatever the verdict, will inevitably be resounding and damaging one way or the other. And yet, as the league’s chief executive Richard Masters said in an interview with the Financial Times last month, “there is no happy alternative to enforcing the rules” — or at least trying to.

In an ideal world, self-regulation would preclude self-interest. But the interests of the game have been overtaken by the financial, commercial or indeed political objectives of club owners. The Premier League, as a body, has been powerless to stop that. The Football Association, still commonly described as English football’s governing body, has become content to be a mere bystander. But battles are raging left, right and centre. Every week seems to throw up another question of what is — or should be — permissible.

By coincidence, one of the few stadiums in English football that is already protected is Stamford Bridge, the freehold for which has been owned since 1997 by Chelsea Pitch Owners (CPO) plc, a group of more than 13,000 shareholders that, as well as supporters, includes former players such as John Terry, Frank Lampard and Marcel Desailly.

The purpose behind the venture was to ensure that Stamford Bridge could not be sold to property developers, as very nearly happened during the 1980s. In the early 2010s, then-owner Roman Abramovich tried to buy the freehold back from CPO to facilitate a move to a new stadium. Despite the widespread goodwill towards Abramovich’s ownership, he fell some way short of the 75 per cent threshold he needed.

At some point in future, once their future plans have become clearer, Chelsea’s current ownership are likely to go back to CPO with a new proposal to buy the leasehold, whether with a view to redeveloping Stamford Bridge or relocating to a new stadium. What Chelsea cannot do is sell the stadium to a sister company simply to resolve a PSR headache.

If that option had been available to them, you suspect they might have done it by now.

Edited by Vesper
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The BookKeeper – Exploring Chelsea’s remarkable finances and why they can keep spending

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6131046/2025/04/22/bookkeeper-Chelsea-finances-transfers/

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Conjure up memories of Chelsea’s most notable moments over the past couple of years and, chances are, actual football will be thin on the ground. Their first Premier League season in the post-Roman Abramovich era was notable only for how poor it was, a 12th-place finish in 2023 marking their worst league position in 29 years.

Last season was improved, with Cole Palmer showing his class and Mauricio Pochettino guiding the club to sixth and a return to European football, even if it came in the guise of the Conference League. A goal two minutes from the end of extra time resigned them to a Carabao Cup runners-up spot. Yet it still seemed a distinctly underwhelming season on the pitch.

More likely to spring to mind are events off the field. Abramovich’s 19 years at the helm came to an abrupt end in the spring of 2022, a consequence of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – with Abramovich sanctioned for his close ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin and Chelsea forced to operate under special measures. The arrival of new owners brought an apparent departure from the past. Out with the oligarch, in with private equity.

Into Stamford Bridge came a consortium fronted by Todd Boehly, a minority shareholder in Major League Baseball’s Los Angeles Dodgers, alongside Clearlake Capital Group L.P., a private equity firm also based out of LA. The price for taking Chelsea from Abramovich’s sanctioned hands was a cool £2.536billion — alongside a commitment to invest a further £1.75billion in the club’s infrastructure in the future.

snip

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Sure have been quick to punish us yet City and all their shit is still dragging on. I realize one is UEFA and the other is PL, but still.

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Posted (edited)
3 hours ago, Pizy said:

Sure have been quick to punish us yet City and all their shit is still dragging on. I realize one is UEFA and the other is PL, but still.

Delete 

Edited by NikkiCFC
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‘Brand Palmer’, Chelsea and how they can use Club World Cup to build U.S. popularity

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6494813/2025/07/16/Chelsea-cole-palmer-club-world-cup/

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Cole Palmer was the face of Chelsea’s Club World Cup campaign from the minute he stepped foot in the United States to the moment he got his hands on the trophy in New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium on Sunday night.

The 23-year-old’s match-winning performance against favourites Paris Saint-Germain in the final, where he scored two goals in a 3-0 win, cemented his status as the Premier League club’s most important player, on and off the pitch.

For Palmer, whose face has been plastered over billboards in New York City, the Club World Cup triumph has the potential to work wonders for his commercial appeal, especially before the international World Cup taking place in the U.S., Canada and Mexico next year.

‘Scary Good’ was the tagline to a Palmer billboard in Times Square in the build-up to Sunday’s final, and he more than lived up to that moniker.

He had already achieved crossover — largely down to his endearing personality and a goal celebration that earned him the nickname ‘Cold Palmer’ — but he has now had his breakout moment on the global stage.

And with under a year to go until next summer’s World Cup in the U.S., Mexico and Canada, the England international is uniquely positioned to capitalise on his Club World Cup success and continue to grow his commercial appeal in America.

“Twelve months ago, beyond the celebration, you didn’t have any sort of big, high-profile performances that would define him and make him relevant to a U.S. audience,” Misha Sher, a global sports marketing expert and executive at WPP Media, tells The Athletic. “You now have those two things.”


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Cole Palmer opened the scoring against PSG in the Club World Cup final (Alex Grimm/Getty Images)

Palmer’s talent with a football, coupled with his personality, is a recipe for success when it comes to growing a following. He is adored for being his authentic self and regularly goes viral on social media for his unintentional one-liners.

A clip from Sunday night, when a confused Palmer appears to say, “Wait, wait, what is he doing?”, before Chelsea captain Reece James lifts the Club World Cup trophy has been viewed millions of times.

The ‘he’ Palmer was referring to is Donald Trump, the American president, who handed over the trophy and then decided to stay for the celebrations. He was not overtly trying to be funny, and yet another example of how he cuts through by simply being himself.

Chelsea beat PSG 3-0 in the final to lift the Club World Cup, with Cole Palmer giving his side a two-goal advantage a third of the way through the tie 🏆

One person the winners didn’t expect to see on stage for the trophy lift was US President Donald Trump… pic.twitter.com/IzgeqtNiwc

— Sky News (@SkyNews) July 14, 2025

For Sher, however, showing he can win and perform in the biggest moments is even more important than his ability to effortlessly generate engagement online.

“In the past, you would say he’s got a quirky character, he’s capable of some magic, and he’s got a cool celebration,” Sher says.

“All of those are nice, but they fade in comparison to defining moments that can solidify your position in the hearts and minds of fans.

“He was named player of the tournament and that takes him to a completely different sphere because Americans love a breakout star. He fits the profile that an American audience loves.”

For next year’s World Cup, Sher believes there will be “major interest” in Palmer from American companies as his “relevance is high” and there’s a good chance he will “get even bigger over the next 12 months”.

“There are moments that can define what happens next in a player’s career,” Sher adds. “You can use the success, attention and profile as a platform to build his brand.

“Rather than hoping that some of the brands will reach out to him, I would be proactively building a strategy to capitalise on this opportunity and grow Cole Palmer’s brand in the U.S. — there will be so much appetite.”

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Palmer with the Club World Cup and Golden Ball trophies (Hector Vivas – FIFA via Getty Images)

Sher cites the importance of Palmer working with “some of the biggest media companies” in the U.S. over the next 12 months to “keep that momentum going”.

Palmer has already developed several notable endorsement deals, including with Burberry, the luxury British fashion house. He is also a Nike athlete and has done promotional work for EA FC, the football video game.

Adrian Wright, a director at Sporting Group International and former commercial director at English Championship club West Bromwich Albion, explains one method Palmer and his team might use to grow his platform in America.

“He will have reports behind his Instagram account that would show what countries people are following him from, what’s the age demographic,” Wright explains.

“An agency would identify brands linked to Palmer’s social following, take that analysis and then identify brands relevant to that demographic.”

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It won’t just be Palmer who may attempt to reap the benefits of a successful month in America, though.

Chelsea should see this as a chance to supercharge their plans to grow in North America, a vital market for the club.

The Athletic has detailed why the Premier League side are leaning heavily on their London heritage in marketing campaigns, hoping to capture a global audience, but there is nothing quite like lifting a trophy.

“If they can’t leverage this win, then they never will,” says Wright. “If I was a commercial director there, I would be switching all of our activity to the U.S. and just making sure that everybody knew about the win and what it means for them.”

The room for growth at Chelsea was evident early in the tournament.

Chelsea’s group-stage match against Los Angeles FC, for example, was attended by just over 22,000 spectators at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which has a capacity of 71,000.

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Chelsea’s game against LAFC was sparsely attended (Kevin C Cox/Getty Images)

Their last-16 win against Benfica attracted just under 26,000 fans at the Bank of America Stadium — only Fluminense’s 2-0 win against Inter had a lower turnout (20,030 at the same ground) among the knockout-stage games.

Before their semi-final against Fluminense, several Chelsea players, including Nicolas Jackson, Enzo Fernandez and Moises Caicedo, tried to shift tickets via their Instagram profiles.

It could be argued that FIFA’s dynamic ticket pricing and poor ticket sales, at least in the early games, didn’t help Chelsea — they weren’t the only side to experience low attendances — but it does suggest they are yet to crack America.

New York City’s iconic Empire State Building was lit up in blue to mark the club’s win, an example of the opportunity they have to cash in on previously unexplored commercial opportunities.

A YouGov survey conducted between July 10 and July 13, which gathered just over 1,000 responses from adults in America, showed Chelsea are still behind Manchester United, Manchester City, Barcelona, Arsenal, Real Madrid and Liverpool for popularity and fame in the U.S.

Five per cent of respondents said they had a ‘very favourable’ view of Chelsea, while 11 per cent said their view was ‘somewhat favourable’. Liverpool, Manchester United, Real Madrid and Barcelona scored seven per cent on the ‘very favourable’ metric.

However, the survey also highlighted how soccer in general still has plenty of room for growth in the U.S., with 62 per cent of the respondents saying they do not follow the sport and held no view on any of the clubs.

During their time in America, Chelsea only held one fan engagement event, which took place in Manhattan on the eve of the final and was dubbed ‘Legends Night’. Claude Makelele, a former Chelsea midfielder, attended and took part in a Q&A session.

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Chelsea’s fan engagement event in New York (Carl Recine – FIFA via Getty Images)

Manchester City, on the other hand, who were knocked out by Al Hilal in the last-16, held fan engagement events in Philadelphia, Atlanta and Orlando, showing there is room for improvement for Chelsea when it comes to engaging their U.S. supporter groups.

Chelsea say there are 100 different supporter groups in the U.S., with around 25,000 members, and that they are working on launching a new and improved supporters club programme for their overseas fans.

“They should use winning this trophy as a strategic platform,” Sher adds. “They can tell the story of an exciting young squad that they built that, against all odds, beat this PSG machine, and beat them convincingly.

“They can take a leaf out of what PSG have done to build their brand in the U.S. and other parts of the world.”

Chelsea’s successful Club World Cup has earned them just over $114million (£85.2m) in participation and prize money — but there is undoubtedly plenty of commercial income still on the table, especially as they are yet to announce a front-of-shirt sponsor for the 2025-26 season.

All Premier League sides talk about the importance of growing their brands in America — Palmer and Chelsea have put themselves in a position to do exactly that.

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Branding, leverage. marketing, FFS. We all agree football now is just another 'business' to them. 

As long as they remember during the pandemic they had the stark realism forced on them that football is fuck all without us fans going to matches

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Chelsea are champions of the world. So what happens next?

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6497531/2025/07/17/Chelsea-cwc-title-transfers-stadium-ownership/

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Chelsea are champions of the world.

That may sound strange, even to many fans, at the end of a season in which Enzo Maresca’s team finished fourth in the Premier League and lifted UEFA’s third-tier club competition, the Conference League.

But there can be no diminishing the emphatic manner of their 3-0 victory over recently-crowned European champions Paris Saint-Germain at MetLife Stadium on Sunday. Chelsea were deserving winners of Gianni Infantino’s inaugural expanded FIFA Club World Cup, netting $114.6m (£84.5m) in prize money in the process.

That triumph, and that financial windfall, opens up a world of possibilities. It also raises a number of questions about what happens next at Chelsea — questions that The Athletic will attempt to answer.


What will they do with the cash?

Firstly, the players and coaching staff will all receive a sizeable bonus equivalent to that which would have been awarded had Chelsea won the Champions League. This is all in keeping with Chelsea’s policy of handing out incentivised contracts rewarding success.

The sudden injection of extra revenue has made no difference to Chelsea’s transfer plans, though. They are already happy with the business done so far this summer in adding three players to their attack in Liam Delap, Joao Pedro and Jamie Gittens.

More arrivals could be made, but they will be dependent upon player departures. That is the main focus for the time being — the plan is to smooth more exits than incomings before the end of the window. The club have a number of squad members who are not part of their long-term plans and are also looking to go elsewhere. Those on the list include Raheem Sterling, Ben Chilwell, Joao Felix, Renato Veiga, Armando Broja, Lesley Ugochukwu and Axel Disasi.

Among many possible remaining transfer targets are Manchester United’s Alejandro Garnacho and Aston Villa’s Morgan Rogers. They have also made an enquiry for Ajax defender Jorrel Hato.

Simon Johnson

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Delap has made a favourable first impression at Chelsea (Juan Mabromata/AFP via Getty Images)

How will this affect pre-season?

The price of playing a full month of competitive football in the United States is that Chelsea will not have a normal full pre-season.

Those who competed at the tournament have now been given three weeks off, which means they will not return to the training ground at Cobham until the first week of August.

Estevao Willian, who agreed to join from Palmeiras last year, and Gittens (who signed from Borussia Dortmund) may report earlier, given their teams were knocked out in the quarter-finals of the Club World Cup.

It is customary these days for footballers to do their own training while away on vacation to stay in shape, but it is obviously not the same as working together with the entire group.

Chelsea saw the Club World Cup as part of their pre-season preparations. It is one of the reasons they wanted to secure Delap, Joao Pedro and Gittens early so they could start to integrate with their new team-mates. Maresca also worked on new tactics and systems during the competition with next season in mind.

But Chelsea have just two friendlies, against Bayer Leverkusen and Milan, before their opening Premier League game versus Crystal Palace.

There are players who have been training at Cobham for 10 days now, but they are returning loanees who are expected to be sold.

Simon Johnson

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Estevao Willian speaks with his future club-mates after Palmeiras’ 2-1 defeat by Chelsea (Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images)

Are the owners now getting along?

Todd Boehly has been the only one to break the public silence on Chelsea’s ownership dynamic since his tensions with majority shareholders Clearlake Capital spilled out last September, giving semi-regular interviews at various business conferences and, most recently, a short exclusive conversation with talkSPORT.

But even then, what he did not say was as illuminating as the words he chose.

“I think the form that you’ve seen is everything we hoped when we were putting this together with (co-sporting directors) Laurence (Stewart) and Paul (Winstanley),” Boehly told talkSPORT.

“Behdad (Eghbali) and I couldn’t be more grateful for the success that they’ve had, and for all Chelsea fans everywhere. We’re just so thrilled, and thank you for sticking with us. We’re really excited about what the future holds.”

Boehly did not shed any light on the health of his relationship with Clearlake co-founder Eghbali, the state of which was a prompt for both parties to explore options to buy out the other last year and was detailed by The Athletic.

It was a surprise to see Boehly walking out alongside United States President Donald Trump as Chelsea’s representative in the Club World Cup medal ceremony on Sunday, given that it is Eghbali who remains the most actively engaged owner in the club’s daily operations and the most visible member of ownership at most games.

The relationship is described by sources with knowledge of the situation as professional, but the issues that arose last year have not gone away. While Chelsea are functioning successfully within the status quo, it is hard to escape the conclusion that something has to give as the club seek to navigate big decisions ahead — chiefly how best to proceed with a stadium plan.

Liam Twomey

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FIFA president Gianni Infantino, Trump, Boehly and PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaifi at MetLife Stadium (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

What is happening with the stadium?

Gaining clarity on when — and where — Chelsea might be playing in a new stadium would be an even bigger milestone for the club than winning the Club World Cup.

As detailed by The Athletic in March, a stand-by-stand renovation of Stamford Bridge has been discounted due to the costs and disruption involved in such a process, as well as the limited ability to improve match-day experience or capacity. That leaves only two options: demolishing Chelsea’s historic home and building an entirely new arena on the site, or acquiring the large plot of land that formerly housed the Earls Court Exhibition Centre and building there.

Staying and redeveloping Stamford Bridge to the specifications that Clearlake and Boehly are looking for is exceptionally complicated, to the point of potentially being unfeasible.

It would be logistically far easier to build a modern super-stadium on the much larger Earls Court site, but that land must be purchased from property developer Delancey, Transport for London (TfL), the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham (LBHF) and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC).

That is unlikely to be simple, or cheap, and then there is the fact that any permanent move away from Stamford Bridge would require 76 per cent approval in a vote of Chelsea Pitch Owners (CPO), the supporter group that owns the freehold to the club’s current home. Roman Abramovich failed to clear that dauntingly high bar when attempting to buy the freehold in 2011.

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An aerial view of Stamford Bridge in 2000, showing Earls Court Exhibition Centre, top (English Heritage/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Chelsea are currently caught between two unenviable stadium options, and are trying to strike a balance between thorough due diligence and a sense of urgency to avoid the club falling behind the Premier League rivals who can boast bigger, newer stadiums.

In the meantime, Delancey’s own big plans for the Earls Court land are moving forward: a decision on planning approval for their sprawling proposed mixed-use development that would include 4,000 new homes is expected from LBHF and RBKC at the end of July.

Liam Twomey

How close are they to securing a front-of-shirt sponsor?

Chelsea are talking to up to 10 major brands and are looking at signing a long-term deal worth £60million a year.

They feel in a strong position to generate such a sum for a number of reasons. It clearly helps that Chelsea are back in the Champions League and have also just won the Club World Cup. But the club believes firms will also want to be associated with the youngest team in the Premier League, a side crammed with exciting players like Cole Palmer, Estevao and Moises Caicedo.

Chelsea have the potential to be one of the best sides for several seasons and being the only club without a front-of-shirt sponsor right now means they do not face competition from rival clubs.

They have received bids over the past 12 months that were for much lower sums and/or for a short length of time. A conscious decision was made to wait in case their argument for a greater price improved courtesy of a return to the Champions League. That decision appears to have paid off. There is confidence a new partnership will be agreed.

Simon Johnson

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Chelsea won the Club World Cup without a front-of-shirt sponsor (Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

Can they win the Premier League next season?

The question has certainly been asked outside Stamford Bridge in the immediate aftermath of the team lifting the Club World Cup.

But, internally, no one is getting carried away by such talk or overexcited by their achievements over the last few months.

Chelsea won the UEFA Conference League and qualified for the Champions League for the first time under the Todd Boehly-Clearlake consortium via a fourth-place Premier League finish. The overriding message, though, is to stay humble. There is a recognition that a number of leading clubs — including defending champions Liverpool, Manchester City and Arsenal — are doing good business during the transfer window. The competition is only going to be stronger next term.

The only expectation for next season is to qualify for the Champions League via a top four/five finish again and to go on good runs in the cup competitions they are involved in — the Champions League, FA Cup and Carabao Cup.

Simon Johnson

Will they defend their Club World Cup trophy in four years’ time?

FIFA are yet to adopt a definitive position on whether winning the Club World Cup guarantees entry into the next edition of the tournament. That is not hugely surprising, given how hastily this summer’s inaugural expanded competition was arranged in the U.S..

The answer may depend on where football’s governing body looks to for precedent. World Cup winners have not been given automatic passage into the next edition of the tournament since France in 2002, but winning UEFA’s flagship Champions League grants qualification for the league phase of the following season’s competition.

As things stand, there is no mechanism for Chelsea to be certain that they will be Club World Cup participants in 2029. But as FIFA demonstrated with a convenient interpretation of their entry criteria to ensure the presence of Lionel Messi and Inter Miami at this summer’s tournament, the entry rules of such a new competition are not fixed.

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Messi competing at this year’s tournament with Inter Miami (Alex Grimm/Getty Images)

It is possible that, by 2029, the Club World Cup may feature even more clubs. It is also possible that Chelsea could render this particular conversation moot by winning the Champions League at some point in the next four years, or by qualifying on merit via another means.

In any case, you can be confident that Chelsea will lobby to be included again as defending champions — they would be foolish not to.

Liam Twomey

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